Intravascular catheter for modeling blood vessels

Abstract

A method of generating a 4D model includes capturing imagery of a catheter and a vessel as the catheter is directed through the vessel to a location of interest, wherein the catheter is disposed on a guidewire, constructing a 3D time varying reference curve describing a trajectory of the guidewire, and constructing a time varying 3D model of the artery using the reference curve.

What is claimed is: 
     
       1. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer executable instructions which when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method of generating a four-dimensional (4D) model during a Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) procedure, said method comprising:
 capturing imagery of a catheter and a vessel as the catheter is directed through the vessel to a location of interest, wherein the catheter is disposed on a guidewire and comprises a plurality of markers and a monitoring body, and wherein the imagery is captured from at least two different viewpoints; 
 segmenting the guidewire and at least one marker from the imagery and back projecting a segmented guidewire and at least one segmented marker into a three-dimensional (3D) space to define a time varying reference curve defining a motion of the monitoring body; 
 recording accelerometer and gyroscope data of the catheter using a combination of sensors as the catheter is pulled away from the location of interest; 
 integrating the accelerometer and gyroscope data in time; 
 predicting a linear and a rotational position of the monitoring body in the imagery; and 
 constructing the 4D model of the monitoring body and the vessel using the predicted linear and rotational position of the monitoring body, wherein the 4D model includes a time varying surface describing the vessel. 
 
     
     
       2. The computer readable medium of  claim 1 , wherein capturing imagery comprises capturing a plurality of angiograms. 
     
     
       3. The computer readable medium of  claim 1 , wherein capturing imagery comprises capturing the different viewpoints simultaneously over a single cardiac cycle. 
     
     
       4. The computer readable medium of  claim 1 , wherein capturing imagery comprises capturing the different viewpoints one at a time over consecutive cardiac cycles. 
     
     
       5. The computer readable medium of  claim 1 , wherein the time varying reference curve defines the motion of the monitoring body as a sequence of coordinates in space and time. 
     
     
       6. The computer readable medium of  claim 1 , wherein the accelerometer and gyroscope data comprises a measure of inertial acceleration and rotational position in three dimensions. 
     
     
       7. The computer readable medium of  claim 1 , further comprising correcting for a drift error accumulated in the accelerometer data using magnetometer data.